Folklore by Simon J. Bronner

 It is interesting to see how the author starts the introduction. In his own words, “This book is about traditional knowledge and practice that people label and study as 'folklore.'” This creates and informs the absence of distinction between traditional knowledge and folklore. 

He identifies folk as a group and lore as a cultural expression (a corpus of knowledge expressed through various ways of being by a community). The connecting thread is the idea of tradition a process through which the ‘lore’ is transmitted and acquired.’

One quality of folklore is unlike the genesis of a wide range of major literary texts whose creation is attributed to single author, folk productions showcase diverse, multiple forms of existence across time and space.

Medieval Anglo-Saxon manuscripts referred to the compound folclār, which literally translates to "knowledge or learning held in common," to denote oral tradition or popular wisdom. This was contrasted with bōclār, which means academic "book-learning" or "doctrine" (Mazo 1996). 

Sixteenth century colonial traders and sailors have accounts of exotic customs and cultural alterity (academic, /ˌɔːlˈtɛrəti/ means otherness) 

Romantic nationalist thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder in his theory of Volksgeist ( “spirit of the people”) argued that a nation's identity and spirit come from its people's culture, especially that of the rural folk. This culture, rooted in nature and tradition, fosters a sense of harmony and spiritual connection.

The Grimm brothers’ scholarly work on folk tales sparked global interest in comparing them across cultures. They suggested a common Indo-European origin, starting a debate about their origins. Grimm brothers have also encouraged the field work to capture the voices of the folks 

Impressed by what Grimms have done british editor (literary magazine Athenaeum) William John Thoms believed that "folklore" could unite different kinds of traditional knowledge. He emphasized the importance of this oral tradition in understanding culture and its continuity over time, as opposed to the newer ideas of modernity. The rise of industrialism, scientism, and imperialism in the 19th century led to a search for traditional cultures and expressions to identify the cultural rupture caused by the newer phenomenon. Folklore emerged as a concept to study these traditions in the face of modernizing Europe. Folklore in rhetorical usage at this time referred more to the language, narratives, and songs of ordinary people in heterogeneous societies.

In India, celebrated for its treasure trove of ancient lore, the colonial administrators initially were involved in publishing the folklore. Texts like Aesop’s fables and Mediterranean mythology from the original Sanskrit was the Jatakamala probally are from 4th century. 

D. N. Majumdar, an Indian folklorist established “Ethnographic and Folk-Culture Society” in 1945 at Lucknow University. Then we also have Karnataka Folklore University.

Russian researchers often separated the study of village life and minority groups from the literary aspects of folklore. While folklore studies were strong in Russia and Eastern Europe, their work wasn't widely discussed in the West until the 1960s and 1970s when the works of scholars like Sokolov, Propp, Azadovskii, and Bogatyrev were translated into English.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, many suppressed works in ethnic languages like Yiddish, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian were revealed. These works often focused on ethnic identity, nationalism, and the experiences of marginalized groups. Folklore, especially folk singing, played a crucial role in the Estonian independence movement in the 1980s.

The evolutionary association of folk to peasants or “primitives” was altered to a relativistic conceptualization of everyone possessing folklore. Folklore became understood as a form of learning and expression intrinsic to humanity. Theoretically, this process of knowledge and practice, summarized as tradition, was significant because it materialized and defined culture as a constructed as well as an inherited force in the conduct of everyday life.

Folklore is essential for individuals to express their individual and social identity. Therefore, folklore, can be identified not just in rural settings but even within urban elite. However, it is strange to see folklorists often venture into rural ecosystems to pursue their research questions of how cultures sustain folklores in the face of modernization. 

The motivation for and strategies of engaging in tradition are often central to analysis. When ethnological studies focused on small groups, folklore studies expanded to include social factors beyond geographical and class locations, such as ethnicity, gender, urbanity, occupation, age, disability, body type, or sexual orientation.

One way to demonstrate the relevance of folklore to daily life is to highlight how traditional knowledge and practices are connected throughout a person's life. For instance, even before a baby is born, a mother might receive traditional advice about signs of the fetus's gender, beliefs about how food affects the baby, and methods to induce labor are some of the folkloric responses to welcome a new life. Toys, slang, gensture, rhymes are the interplay of tradition. Similarly adolocence rituals, humour, customs.

This work titled the basics of folklore explores the methods and reasons researchers use to understand and apply folklore as an influential element in the lives of individuals, communities, and entire nations.